


Wulfer Fíli

by Chelidona (Hobbity)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: I tagged it as FiKi but it can easily be read as gen, M/M, Werewolf Fíli, fairytale AU, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:14:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9367529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbity/pseuds/Chelidona
Summary: Kíli and his three sisters are orphans barely managing to survive on an unnamed Scottish island. Just when they need it the most, a mysterious benefactor leaves them food enough to survive the winter. I wonder who that might be?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Khim_Azaghal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khim_Azaghal/gifts).



> Based on a tumblr post about the "wulfer" legend from the Shetland islands, a kind of werewolf with a human body and the head a wolf who was said to leave fish on the window sills of poor people. My tumblr mobile messed up and showed me a picture of Fili instead of the art somebody had done for the legend and thus Khim Azaghal insisted I write this story so here we are.

One day, Kíli's father did not come back from his fishing trip. Nor did his neighbour and fishing partner.  
The neighbour’s wife had family on the mainland. She moved there with her children, full of regret that she couldn’t take the orphaned family with her. It would be too much of a burden to her sister.  
Kíli and his three little sisters had no family they knew of on the mainland. Nor on the island. His mother had died in childbirth; their father, the only surviving son of his parents, had brought her from the mainland, and if she had any family there, she never said.

Their father had not been religious; he had been known for his blasphemies and Kíli's sisters were not even baptized. No one felt moved to help his children after he disappeared.  
Many believed that he was not “lost at sea.” No, the scoundrel had absconded, thinking he could throw his responsibility into the lap of the community. No doubt he would reappear with another strange woman from the mainland, bringing forth more brats he was not prepared to care for.

Kíli had been 15. Old and strong enough to go out fishing himself. But with their father, his boat disappeared and Kíli did not know how to build a new one. Nor did he have the funds to buy one. He just knew enough about carpentry to keep their shack from disintegrating, propping up the stone walls with drift wood where they threatened to collapse.

Their garden delivered some vegetables. Potatoes even, at first. But then one summer a disease destroyed them. After that, some neighbours allowed Kíli’s sisters to go over their potato patches once their own family had very thoroughly picked it. But Maisie, Allie and Ceitie always found a few potatoes to bring home. They planted two of them, and they failed to grow the next year. But they tried again, with more success, and they had hope of building up their own potato patch again.

They had two sheep and a neighbour allowed his ram to tup them free of charge, so they had wool, lamb meat and sheep milk. The sheep were sickly though, the little land they owned barely yielded enough grass for them, but they clung to life, just like their humans did. Kíli also put snares in the small wood remaining on the island, catching the occasional rabbit or bird and the occasional beating up by one of the other villagers. Hunting, even small scale, was forbidden. He also fished at the shore occasionally, catching some fish, but he wasn’t skilled.

He scaled the cliffs to steal eggs from the doves. It was dangerous, he strained an ankle or a wrist more often than he could count when he slipped, but the bounty was worth it.

They survived. Maisie, the oldest of the sisters, knew how to cook and something about herbs. She taught her younger sisters. Allie, the second one, turned out to be a genius with a needle and thanks to her skills, using bits and pieces of their late mother’s old dresses (the two of them), the sisters were clad decently even as they grew taller. Kíli started to wear their father’s Sunday clothes, a heavy kilt and a white shirt, when he grew out of his clothes.

Still, when Kíli was 19, despite Allie’s best efforts, their clothes were little more than rags. And then it was autumn and Maisie became sick. Allie and Ceitie did their best to care for their sister.

But Maisie had never shown them how to store vegetables for winter. Half of them were rotten when they found out they had done it wrong.

Just when Maisie recovered, Kíli grew sick too. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t be sick. With their vegetable stores all but depleted, he needed to bring home meat and fish.

He was too weak to set up snares. Against his sisters’ protests, he all but crawled to the shore, to a secluded spot where villagers wouldn’t trouble him. He barely managed to throw out a fishing line, his arms refusing to cooperate. His sight was blurry and he felt darkness closing in from the side. Struggling with his consciousness, he sat up straighter, watching the water, the mesmerising little waves.

He woke up laying in front of their shack. The moon was peeking out from behind a thick cloud. The cold had numbed his face. But … he wriggled weakly. He was covered by a large pelt. They didn’t own a pelt this big.

He called for his sisters and the door was flung open immediately. They had waited up for him in the dark. And now they found three fish on top of the pelt covering him.

The next morning Kíli was too weak to move. But Allie found four fish and some herbs on the window sill in the evening. They made tea for Kili and Maisie from the herbs and cooked the fish on their weak turf fire.

In the morning, some rough bits of turf were piled in front of their house, along with a dead rabbit and some turnips.

It was a good thing they cooked rabbit-turnip stew and devoured it immediately, an irate shepherd from the village came asking in the evening if they were the ones who had stolen his turnips.

Everyday brought knew presents. It wasn’t much, just enough to keep them alive. A miracle in Kíli’s book, he hadn’t expected them to make it through the winter.

For the first time since their father died, somebody cared about his little family. But he couldn’t figure out who. None of the islanders had ever showed them much kindness. Sure, some of the women felt a twinge of their conscience when they saw his little sisters foraging the hedges and occasionally pressed a little food and a lot of stern words at them.

And some of them came now, after the shepherd whose turnips were stolen had seen that the two oldest were sick. Christian mercy it was, they said. They brought a little food, a little turf for the fire and a little medicine. They didn’t hide their good deeds at all.

So Kíli still pretended to be sick when he felt quite fine again. He nearly coughed his lungs out all day, to convince whoever might be listening that a very sick man was inside the shack.

Then he crept outside, hidden in the shadow, peering around the corner to the window were their kind benefactor left his gifts. It was March by now, but still cold enough outside to make him shiver, even though Allie had turned part of the massive pelt into a nice cloak for him. He started to doubt his idea of ambushing whoever brought them gifts.

But his parents, “heathens” though they might have been in the eyes of the Church, had brought him up right. He needed to express his gratitude, he needed to find out what he could do in turn to whoever had made sure that his sisters and he survived.

Finally, his patience was rewarded. A short, stocky figure crept up from the shore, a bag in his hand. And the weirdest hood Kíli had ever seen (not that he had seen many, of course). It almost looked as if the man (for he was sure now it was a man, by the way the figure moved) had wolf ears. And a … a snout?

He stood frozen as the moon came out just to show enough of the creature silently putting down three fish and a couple of potatoes on the window sill.

The body was that of a stocky young man. The head … the head … it looked like a wolf’s head. Kíli had never seen a wolf, only dogs, but that was how wolf head’s had been described to him.

It was just … he had always thought wolves were four legged. That they had bodies pretty much like dogs, not men.

He gathered his senses quickly enough to silently follow the beast. Years of evading unfriendly villagers had honed his ability to move stealthily. The beast did not notice him as he walked back to the shore, walking away from the village, further than a villager would walk, and then up a little knowe. It was steep, very steep and Kíli was not fully recovered.

He slipped, displacing stone. The growl that followed vibrated through his body and he tried to flatten himself against the ground. Useless, the creature living here would know every boulder.

He felt himself grabbed by the scruff of his neck and dragged up. Hands patted down his body. Doing what? It was almost like his mother checking for injuries. A satisfied grunt followed. Kíli was fine. But he was still held by two supernaturally strong hands.

A cold shiver ran down his spine. This was a secretive fairy creature. And he had nearly stumbled upon its home. This didn’t bode well, not in any of the stories he remembered from his childhood. Not well at all.

He dared to look up at the creature in front of him. Dawn was breaking and the sun reflected the golden hair covering the figure’s head and torso. He wore a pair of pants that looked like bundle of rags, worse than Kíli’s patchy kilt and coarse socks.

“I’m sorry,” Kíli burst out. “I … I just wanted to thank you! I didn’t mean to … I just … my sisters …”

The wolf growled. Kíli wasn’t an expert on wolf facial expressions, but he seemed unsure of what to do.

“Just … if there is any way I can help you … anything … you … you saved us and … we don’t have much, but we’ll share what we have …”

He trailed off, uncertain as the eerily blue eyes of the creature stared into his. Then, he was released and strong hands turned him around with surprising gentleness, nudging him to start walking home.

Shoulders slumped, Kíli trudged home. He didn’t even dare to look back.

He had upset the one being who had meant well with their family. Who was he to just follow?

  
He couldn’t be sure the creature would return. But just in case, he put the last bit of preserves they had on the window sill, and his father’s good hat. It was silly, but those were the most expensive items they owned.

The next morning, preserves and hat were gone and replaced with fish.

He left one of the grilled fish on the ledge along with old socks of his that Allie hadn’t repurposed yet. The wolf seemed to have smaller feet than him.

Again, they were gone the next morning and replaced with fish.

Kíli was already running out of items to give. He made Ceitie, the youngest, weave a little crown out of the first flowers of spring and left that along with some of the soup Maisie had cooked.

Kíli was still awake when he heard scratching at the window sill. His breath stopped, then he whispered through the window “You’re welcome to come inside.”

Silence followed. Then, a tentative knock.

Heart pounding, Kíli opened the door, aware that his sisters had woken up by now and must be listening with baited breath. It was too dark to see anything, the embers of the fire too dim to light more than the fireplace, but he felt the body warmth as the wolf stepped in.

Then, hands pressed the flower crown in his own hand. Grabbing his wrist, the wolf lifted his arms up.

“You want me to put it on you?” Kíli whispered, not sure why. He was standing so close, he could feel the nod. And slowly, reverently, he sat the rumpled, rather pathetic crown on top of the wolf head.

The flash of light that followed threw him backwards, tumbling down onto his bottom.

The light had not shown the head of a wolf. Instead, the most beautiful blond haired man stood in their humble room. Ceitie whimpered in the corner.

“I am sorry.” The soft voice of the stranger broke the spell and Ceitie whimpered harder. A little shriek escaped Allie. Maisie, like Kíli, was obviously too shocked to make any noise.

“I am truly sorry.” The voice was pleasant, like honey. “I did not mean to scare you.”

Maisie, brave Maisie, was the first to find her words. “You were the one to help us.”

“Yes.” The smile was audible. “And now you have helped me.”

“We …” Kíli tried to say more. “Just … sit down, please? And … we can reheat the soup I left you? Would you like some?”

He heard Maisie already jumping up to go and fetch it. Allie went to the fire and rekindled it with some more turf. The dim light highlighted the strong silhouette of the stranger.

At a loss, Kíli watched his sister come back in and pouring the soup back into the kettle.

He noticed Ceitie pressed into Allie’s side, staring at the stranger. The youngest, she was not used to people outside her family at all.

“That is Ceitie,” Kíli said helplessly smiling. “With Allie. Maisie is the one cooking. And I am Kíli.”

“I know.” The stranger’s smile was illuminated by the red light of the fire, which caught the long moustache framing his mouth. “My name is Fíli. Short for Philip.”

Maisie gave him the bowl of soup and he ate it gratefully. Then he suggested they sleep before he told them his story.

As a matter of course, Kíli invited him to come and lay down on the floor with him. He could not let a stranger share the bed with his sisters.

They shared the pelt that had been the first present to Kíli, without which he would have frozen to death. Even after Allie had used some if to make Kíli's cloak, it was large enough to cover both him and Fíli now. They lay close enough for Kíli to feel the strong muscles. Fíli still had no shirt. And his smell was intoxicating, through the smell of the smoke and the soup and the sea it was strong enough to distract Kíli from sleep. He lay still, enjoying the sounds of Fíli’s deep, slow breaths, feeling them in his hair.

Dawn broke too soon. Eager as he was to listen to Fíli’s story, Kíli was not ready to lose the closeness of his saviour.

But Maisie began to cook the last buckwheat groats they had, mixed with the first tender leaves of the garden and some sheep milk.

Fíli shivered a bit when he sat up. Without his fur, he seemed to feel the cold just like them. So Kíli put the cloak from the pelt over Fíli’s shoulders.

Over breakfast and a morning spent in the garden with the entire family, weeding and planting, Fíli unfolded his tale.

He was the heir of the king of Scotland, he claimed. Son of the king's late brother and married to a noble lady when he was 18. He had been all arrogance, too busy being admired by the court to care for his wife.

If he had, he might have found she was a witch before it was too late.  
To celebrate Fíli’s coming of age at 21, a great feast was organized, lasting a week. On the second day, the crown prince led a hunting party which was joined by his wife and other ladies of the royal household. And there, on the hunt, the royal princess had cursed her husband. Cursed him with a wolf’s head and a wolf’s pelt, setting his own hounds against him. He had barely outrun them.  
In shame, he continued running North, foraging, hunting, fishing and stealing.

It had been two years. He found that he was particularly skilled at fishing, so he kept to the coast. And just the previous year, just when Kíli needed help, he had hidden himself on a ferry to the islands.

“I found you passed out near the shore,” he explained, looking almost sheepish. “You were nearly frozen to death. I had a bear’s pelt, I stole it from a laird on the ferry from the mainland, just because he sneered at me once in court … and you needed it. I saw that it was only you and three younger girls in the hut. So I continued to bring you help.”

“And … what happened last night?” Kíli asked when Fíli didn’t continue.

“I am not sure …” Fíli tugged his moustache. “I think I heard my wife say that if I was recognized as royalty, the curse would be broken. I saw that little flower crown last night …”

“I made that!” Ceitie intercepted with glee.

“And it was beautiful.” Fíli smiled at the girl. “I wanted to leave again, but when you invited me in, I just had this hunch … and when you put a crown on my head, the curse was lifted.”

“My crown,” Ceitie said proudly. “My crown brought you back.”

“And Kíli who crowned him,” Maisie said sternly.

“He did.” Fíli smiled. “Without your family, I would likely have remained this half wolf creature for the rest of my life.”

“You were a beautiful wulfer,” Ceitie told him. “I saw you once too.”

“Wolf, not wulfer,” Allie corrected absentmindedly. “Have you stolen anything I could make a shirt from? You cannot be seen like this.”

Fíli glanced down. His chest was still covered by a thick layer of hair, but it was no fur and clearly, he felt cold. The cloak could only cover so much when he was moving.

And just like that, the family became practical. Kíli went and fetched a blanket Fíli had stolen somewhere and the small bag with Fíli’s possessions (including the hat Kíli had gifted him) from the little cave Fíli had dug in the hillside. Maisie cooked the fish Fíli had brought the day before. Allie spun some wool into yarn to use for Fíli’s shirt and Fíli sat by the fire, brushing his hair and cutting his beard.

In the evening, Fíli had a rough, new shirt, and they had a plan. Fíli was intent on travelling back to the royal court and he convinced Kíli and his sisters to follow him. He had faith in his uncle to still be looking for his heir and to not have replaced him. His rescuers, he promised would be royally rewarded.

They told the villagers that Fíli was a cousin from the mainland. Fíli had some coins, stolen here and there which bought them a passage to the mainland. From there it was several, daunting days to journey to the royal court. They began to travel on foot, trudging through towns and forests, foraging and fishing, largely ignored by those they encountered. At night, Fíli and Kíli still shared the bear’s pelt, Kíli’s sister shared a huddle of blankets and sheep pelts.

Kíli’s family had never left the island, never even left the environs of their village. They had not known the world was so big. Or horses so big. Sheep so big. The further they travelled south, the bigger everything became.

They were run out of one town by a group of beggars, who thought they had come to encroach on their turf. Another time, guards chased them out of a forest, claiming it belonged to the local laird. One sheriff arrested them for loitering. Fíli managed to beat him before he could put them in gaol and they escaped.

After only a few days, they had forgotten that Fíli was not their cousin. He became a natural part of the family, filling some of the gap that was left when their father was lost.

But the closer they got to Edinburgh, the more anxious Kíli and Maisie felt. The towns became bigger, the local noblemen and citizens richer. The orphans had never seen so much splendour, seen clothes so rich and houses so large. Fíli laughed gently when they stared at a mansion in the distance, explaining that the royal palaces were much, much bigger. While Allie and Ceitie were just excited, their older siblings felt some apprehension the more they understood that Fíli truly came from another world, a world in which the likes of them counted for even less than they had on the island. At least there, people had known them.

Finally, they reached the big city. Everything after that happened in a blur to Kíli. Fíli led them through the town, holding Kíli and Maisie’s hands, who in turn held on to their young siblings. Such crowds. More people than lived on the islands seemed to mill in a single street. And there were so many streets.

Yet Fíli knew his way, never faltered once on his way to the palace. The guard at the gate tried to chase them away, but when Fíli showed him the ring he kept in his bag and demanded to see “Captain Dwalin” he barked the order to another guard. Fíli stood proud and entirely sure of himself, while Kíli and his sisters trembled under the stares of the guards and all those other people around them. Then a burly man appeared shouting, yelling at the guards, hugging Fíli, bowing to Fíli and trying to usher Fíli in. Fíli just about managed to demand that his friends had to come with him. Dwalin seemed to notice them for the first time, at the same time that he noticed the rags his prince was wearing.

Yet they were led to the great Hall, were the king was holding an audience.

King Thorin. A name they didn’t even know on the islands, they had just heard whispered on their journey south. Clad in blue and silver, fur around his shoulders and a heavy crown upon his head.

Everyone fell silent when Dwalin led them in. Recognition dawned on some faces and then Thorin barked “Everyone out.” Kíli and his sisters would have loved to follow this order, but Fíli grabbed Kíli’s arm.

When it was just them, Thorin and Dwalin, the king rushed forwards, with a cry of “Fíli” and Kíli was shoved aside when Thorin hugged his nephew as if he meant to suffocate him.

Tears streaked the king’s face when he straightened, looking at his nephew awe-struck.

“You are back,” he whispered. “You are back, you have come back to me and you are yourself again.”

“Thanks to these gentle folks,” Fíli took the opportunity to say, one hand on his uncle’s arm, the other on Kíli’s shoulder.

“Dwalin, order refreshments to be brought immediately. And bring the wizard and Bilbo. We need to hear this tale.”

So Fíli told his tale. Part of his story, it turned out, was missing vital information. His wife had tried to kill Thorin once Fíli was chased way, attempting to usurp the throne. Gandalf and a small English nobleman called Bilbo Lord Baggins were just in time to stop the plan. It had been Sauron, Gandalf explained, Sauron who had taken over the noble lady before she could marry the crown prince. Sauron, the evil wizard who had been thought defeated 1000 years ago.

He was banished again now.

Later Thorin decided that Kíli’s mother had in fact been his own sister, the Lady Dis, who disappeared just a year before Kíli’s birth. Thus, Kíli and his sisters were part of the royal family. They were assigned a row of chambers with beds bigger than their old shack. They were given new clothes, made from fabrics they didn’t recognize. They were given lessons in etiquette, and how to eat food they hadn’t even known existed and how to speak “properly”. Through it all, Fíli was there to support them, taking them out to show them more of his world from the safety of a coach. Taught Kíli how to ride and shielded his “cousins” from too curious members of the royal household and the court.

Kíli and his sisters were naturally cheerful despite all that life had thrown at them. They soon found their way into their new life, charming lords and ladies, their laughter, too loud for royalty, ringing through festivities.

Kíli remained at Fíli’s side for the rest of their lives; their devotion to each other became a legend of its own.

Fíli was often heard to say that he was grateful to Sauron; his life as a “wulfer” had taught him humility and kindness and brought Kíli and his sisters into his life. No crown was worth more than family.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one morning. Please let me know if you spot mistakes! Of course I am grateful for other comments too :)


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